China's rulers team up with notorious 'White Wolf' of Taiwan

John Garnaut

Taipei: The Chinese Communist Party, which came to power promising to break the nexus between politics and crime, has teamed up with a notorious triad figure to help press its claims in Taiwan.

Chang An-lo, known as White Wolf, is a convicted kidnapper, extortionist and heroin trafficker who has been mobilising muscular protests and intimidating pro-democracy activists on the island.

Chang's ties to the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) have been well known since the 1980s, when his ''brothers'' in the Bamboo Union triad were jailed for murdering a poilitical critic.

In an interview for Good Weekend, Chang has now shed light on how he came to survive and thrive in the protection of a different kind of powerful and secretive family network: the Chinese Communist Party’s "princeling" aristocracy.

“Yes I’ve met lots of these princelings,” said Chang, listing the sons of a former Communist Party general secretary and a top revolutionary general.

Roderic Broadhurst, professor of criminology at the Australian National University, said Chang’s testimony illuminates a “symbiotic” relationship between politics and crime that will ultimately undermine the legitimacy of the party-state.

Advertisement

The evidence should persuade “naïve” law enforcement agencies that triads like the Bamboo Union remained relevant to drug, money laundering and tax crimes in Australia even as members are becoming more gentrified, entrepreneurial and willing to work across ethnic and other lines.

“Their reputation for violence is still worth money,” Professor Broadhurst said. “The mere fact that they work with lots of other crime groups is an indicator of adaptation, not that they’ve been diluted or disappeared.”

Paul Monk, a former intelligence analyst, said Chang’s web of political connections calls for a re-examination of how triads relate to “the Communist Party's foreign operations arms”, especially as the ethnic Chinese population swells to around 900,000 and vast amounts of money flow into the country from Chinese sources.

One of Chang’s closest friendships is with Hu Shiying, the son of the Communist Party’s most well known propaganda chief, Hu Qiaomu, and also an old associate of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Chang and Mr Hu sometimes dined together, including one occasion when they ate lobster and abalone and discussed mixing methamphetamines with Viagra, according to a guest at that dinner.

Mr Hu’s ties also extend to the KMT, judging by the flattering calligraphy message that hangs in the hallway of his luxury Beijing condominium, which is signed by Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeoh.

Chang said he gained entry into princeling circles through an elder cousin who stayed behind during the 1949 revolution and whose father, Hou Weiyu, was an underground protest leader who became executive vice-president of the Communist Party School.

In the official bureaucracy, Chang said his main friendships were not within China's United Front Work Department as many had assumed – “they have no power” – but in the Taiwan Affairs Office, which is headed by a minister-level official who has just returned from a path-breaking visit to Taiwan (where he was protected by muscular counter-protesters).

Chang’s right-hand man at his China Unification Promotion Party is a former general, Lee Kuo-yung, who retired last year as president of the Taiwanese defence ministry’s Chung Cheng Armed Forces Preparatory School.

Major-General Lee told Fairfax that their party now boats 30,000 members.

Recently, however, the "White Wolf" has spread his webs of influence to leading members of the traditionally independence-minded opposition, the DPP, who he said arranged his safe re-entry to Taiwan despite charges outstanding against his name.

According to a source with direct knowledge, China’s Ministry of State Security has recently used the Bamboo Union to channel lucrative opportunities to select leaders of the DPP, after senior leaders had placed huge pressure to gain concessions.